Is this the best aquarium fish trap?

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There’s so many ways to build a fish trap for removing problem fish from an aquarium, all of them a minor PITA to use, operate, and only marginally efficient at catching fish from the aquarium. Enter this simple beauty of acrylic design, an elegant acrylic box that is positioned where the fish congregate for food with the easiest closing door mechanism of all.

Part of what sucks about fish traps is that they mostly rest on the floor, taking up space, and are at the bottom of the tank where they are hard to reach. Not to mention, fish don’t necessarily hang out there unless the trap is baited. This trap however, is magnetically attached to the aquarium glass, so it can go anywhere that your fish expect the food to drop.

Additionally, LiveAquaria director Kevin Kohen who introduced us to this wonderful design uses a syringe of food to also entice the fish to enter and linger. The best part of this trap is the rotating door that pulls shut with ease using only a string to seal the enclosure. With no training and just a little tug, we managed to catch three angelfish and one wrasse from Kevin’s show tank in a single try.

The bad news is, we don’t know who makes this trap. The good news is, the design is so simple that just about anyone with rudimental acrylic fabrication skills could easily put one together. Big thanks to Kevin for showing us this trap and letting us try it out, now that its documented it will only be a matter of time until this design is widely used.